Practices to Adapt in a Preschool Teacher Job

Vinod Kakumanu

Aug. 21, 2018, 5:12 p.m.

Preschool teachers have more than one set of responsibilities on their shoulders. Being a preschool teacher is an associated qualification to their identity as a teacher as they enter the students’ life when their minds are most impressionable and brains in accelerated receptive mode. The values they imbibe in the preschool or in that formative period of life is significant in shaping their lives. By virtue of this intricate and intimate correlation, the responsibility on a preschool teacher’s shoulders increases fundamentally. These points aside you can scarcely argue with the fact that teaching a bunch of preschoolers and actually making them understand what you are teaching is one heck of a task to achieve. A list of some teaching strategies for the preschoolers for easing the preschool teacher job relatively is therefore in order:

Symbols and Logos - One way to enrich the vocabulary and promote learning among preschoolers is to let them verbally label common brands and symbols. The process of translation from pictures to words actually helps the children, as it is widely acknowledged that visual stimuli aided instruction have a much faster and longer impact over the mind than written words. This activity can be made more interactive if the parents and students collectively take pictures of things or logos around them in their neighborhood including the street signs, pictures of birds, car logos or clothing brands and so on. Then, the children should bring the pictures to the classroom and name them by themselves and share their dubbing exercise amongst other children. This makes this activity more interesting and interactive.

Sound Recognition and Matching - This particular activity will need you to cut out a few large but not too large sized alphabets and few small sized but not too small ones, cut out from the cardboard. For every alphabet, there should at least be one corresponding object placed in the pile. Firstly, let the children pronounce the alphabet correctly, and then encourage them to choose an object starting with that alphabet. This activity is said to be one of the students’ favorite because it is best for practical learning and it also results in something creative which can be kept or displayed in the classroom walls.

Switch Out Activities - You must have heard someone saying this to someone else or maybe to you only “You have an attention span of a child” because children indeed have a very small attention span. So, if you plan on activities that will take a lot of time, they will not be very beneficial or useful for the children. To keep the children focused, try switching from one activity to another after a short span of time. Suggestions by experts are to start the day with more soothing activities such as listening and reading and then moving towards the lively activities like dancing or running. What will probably help more would be representing and displaying the daily schedule with colors and pictures to make students excited about the activities of the day?

Start a Garden - One of the best ways to teach children about natural growth is to have them work in a natural garden – it does not matter if you have a nice open space or just a bit by the window, the work and effort that will be made by the students are all that matters. Working in the garden will also help them with their personal growth, cultivating life and promote relaxation and distraction from the lessons and stress. This will also help them to reinforce a routine to take out some time and regularly observe the growth of the plants and check are they been taken good care of or not.

Establishing Rules - While this might be something understood, setting rules at the starting of the year is something which greatly helps further in the lessons for the teachers. The year must be started with some ground rules like keeping your hands to yourself or using inside voices. Post the rules in a common area or maybe post it on the walls of the classroom so the students can have a clear look and this will remind the rules daily. If a child breaks a rule, remember not to use harsh language and you should always remember using euphemisms for disciplining. Reminding the students of the rules instead of using negations will help more rather than denying them.

Vinod Kakumanu heads a team of school services professionals and is an independent commentator on Indian school education scenario. Vinod has assisted school promoters establish 35+ schools besides providing ancillary services to over 1000 schools across India. He envisions a future where quality education is made available to every child of the country. The focus he places on the quality of the deliverables and customer satisfaction has made him renowned in the field of K-12 school education.